## Facts

- Catherine Peters fell on July 14, 2000 in the shower area of a senior center owned and operated by the City of Bethel.
- Peters suffered multiple fractures to her right leg and required surgery using internal and external hardware, including a bone graft, followed by additional treatment visits and later removal of the external fixator.
- After healing, Peters’s leg remained bent and her physical activities were reduced.
- The director of senior services for the center investigated the fall and prepared an “Accident/Incident Investigation Report.”
- The report included a recommendation that shower bars should be installed on the shower and sauna walls to help elderly users support themselves.
- The report also contained a section indicating that the center followed the recommendation and installed shower bars after the incident.
- Peters sued the City for negligent maintenance, claiming that the absence of shower bars at the time of the fall was negligent and that bars would have prevented the injury.
- At trial, the superior court excluded evidence that the City actually installed shower bars after the fall under Alaska Rule of Evidence 407 (subsequent remedial measures).
- The superior court admitted a redacted version of the accident report that showed the recommendation to install bars but removed the portion stating that the City installed them.
- The jury found the City mostly at fault (87%) and awarded noneconomic damages, including based on a finding that Peters suffered “severe disfigurement” for purposes of Alaska’s noneconomic-damages cap statute.
- The City appealed, challenging (1) admission of the recommendation language, (2) submission of severe disfigurement to the jury, and (3) alleged misconduct in Peters’s closing argument.

## Issues

1. Does Alaska Rule of Evidence 407 require exclusion of a post-accident report’s recommendation to install safety equipment, where evidence that the equipment was later installed is excluded as a subsequent remedial measure?
2. Did the superior court err by submitting the question of “severe disfigurement” to the jury under Alaska’s noneconomic-damages cap statute?
3. Did statements in Peters’s closing argument warrant reversal or a new trial?

## Decision

- The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the judgment.
- The court held that Rule 407 did not bar admitting the report’s recommendation to install shower bars because a recommendation is not itself a remedial measure “taken”; the court approved admitting the recommendation while excluding evidence that the City later installed bars.
- The court held that the superior court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the jury to decide whether Peters’s condition constituted severe disfigurement.
- Reviewing the closing-argument claims under plain-error review (given the lack of a timely objection), the court concluded the remarks did not deny the City a fair trial and did not justify a new trial.

## Legal Principles

- Alaska Rule of Evidence 407 excludes evidence of post-incident remedial measures when offered to prove negligence or culpable conduct, but the rule targets actions taken to fix a problem, not every post-incident statement about what should be done.
- A post-accident internal report that recommends safety changes may be admissible even if the report also references later corrective action, so long as the trial court removes the portion describing the corrective action and otherwise manages unfair prejudice through ordinary evidentiary discretion.
- “Severe disfigurement” for purposes of Alaska’s noneconomic-damages cap is evaluated under an objective, reasonable-person standard: the question is whether a reasonable person would find that the injury mars the plaintiff’s appearance and creates unattractiveness likely to draw negative attention or cause embarrassment; the condition need not be permanent, but a reasonable healing period must have passed before evaluating it.
- Closing-argument misconduct generally requires a timely objection to preserve error; absent an objection, reversal requires plain error that affected the basic fairness of the trial.

## Conclusion

The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the negligence verdict and damages award against the City of Bethel, ruling that Rule 407 barred proof that the City later installed shower bars but did not require exclusion of a post-accident report’s recommendation to install them, that the severe-disfigurement question was properly left to the jury, and that the challenged closing-argument remarks did not warrant a new trial under plain-error review.


City of Bethel v. Peters, 97 P.3d 822 (2004)